Changes
by Ashlee Pond
Summary: He always comes when she calls. Or, she thinks with a start, he used to. Maybe this new Doctor isn't as accommodating. Maybe he doesn't feel he has time for the whims of little Amelia Pond. There's a whole universe out there, after all; what's to stop this new Doctor from finding something that interests him more than her? - Sherlock's the new Doctor, and Amy's not quite coping.


**Reviewer One-Shot Series!**

_The prompt: _AU where Sherlock is the twelfth Doctor and Amy is his companion.

_For: _Fifi1789

_Notes: _While the new Doctor in this story is based on Sherlock, his identity is kept quite vague and for all we know could fit in with Capaldi's Doctor, if you'd prefer to look at it that way. Also, sorry that this turned into a little bit of a love letter for the Eleventh Doctor. I really don't want Matt to leave!

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**Changes  
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He's not quite what Amy was expecting.

She doesn't mean that in bad way, necessarily, because it's not bad. _He's _not bad. He's just _different, _and different is hard to get used to. Amy's never been that good with change - it can feel too much like abandonment, and god that terrifies her - but she's trying, she really is trying her best to adjust.

His new _quirks, _as she thinks of them, aren't really helping though.

./././

She wakes up the morning after the regeneration and makes her way to the console room on feet that move too quickly for her sleep fogged brain, nearly tripping down the steps in her haste to get to him.

Except he's not there.

The room is empty and completely silent, except for the faint hum and pulse of the central column that lets Amy know they're in motion.

"Doctor?" she calls, craning her neck around the console and getting on her knees to check the lower level. "Hello, Doctor?"

There's no answer.

Her stomach sinks.

He always comes when she calls. He drops everything for his Amelia, always. Or, she thinks with a start, he used to. Maybe this new him isn't as accommodating. Maybe he doesn't feel he has time for the whims of little Amelia Pond. There's a whole universe out there, after all – what's to stop this new Doctor from finding something that interests him more than her.

All of this runs through her mind in a matter of seconds, and then she's on her feet and brushing herself off, because he wouldn't ever think of her like that. New body or no, he's her best friend. He's not ignoring her, he's probably still in bed.

Time Lords don't need to sleep as much as humans, she knows, but regeneration has got to sap you of energy, she figures. So she asks the TARDIS to lead her to his bedroom, and she's relieved to find that the first door on her right is indeed his room.

She creaks the door open and tiptoes in, holding her breath. She's only been in his bedroom a handful of times before, and only once with his permission. It feels strange, entering his personal space like this. The lights are off, and the room is dark. She cuts a path across delightfully soft carpet straight towards the foot of the bed, the only thing she can see, and curls her fingers over the edge of the frame.

"Doctor," she whispers.

When there's no response she carefully leans forward and splays her hand along the silk sheets. She runs her hand to the left and right, but comes in contact with nothing but more bed sheets. The bed is undisturbed, and there's no sign of the Doctor here.

With a sigh she stomps back out into the hall, shutting the door behind her and tilting her head back.

"Please," she pleads with the TARDIS, "Can you take me to him?"

There's a hum in reply, and then there's a new door at the end of the hall, and Amy's relieved to find she recognises this one.

She enters the wardrobe with the confidence that comes from numerous visits and calls out, "Doctor, where are you?"

There's no response in here, either, but Amy trusts the TARDIS, so she persists. She walks down the first aisle of clothes, and then the second, and she decides that if he's not around the next corner she's just going to go sit in the console room and wait for him.

But he _is _around the next corner, thank god, because sitting alone in the jump seat and waiting for the Doctor like she was seven again would have been more humiliating than Amy could handle.

He's admiring himself in the full length mirror, turning from side to side and admiring the long, navy coat he's got on over a white shirt and black trousers. His dark hair is curling against the collar of the coat, and his bright blue eyes are studying his reflection with an intensity she still isn't used to.

The sight of him stops her in her tracks, because he looks nothing like himself.

"Where's the bowtie?" she hears herself ask, voice quiet and distant and not really sounding like hers at all.

He turns to glance at her, eyebrows raising slightly, and goes back to watching his own reflection. "You said you didn't like the bowtie."

"I never said that."

"You certainly implied it."

His voice is deeper now, a much richer baritone that isn't at all like the one she's used to hearing, and while the sound of it sends a small thrill up her spine it doesn't imbue her with the same adoring familiarity as his old one.

"You know I was joking."

"Were you?" He grabs a blue scarf off the rack beside the mirror and loops it around his neck. Seemingly satisfied, he turns to her and poses with his arms out to the side. "What do you think?"

"You look so… normal," she manages, though the final word catches in her throat.

He gives her a _look, _one that she can't read on this new face, and tucks his hands into his pockets. "You don't like it."

"No, I mean… It's _nice. _It's just so… normal." She keeps coming back to that word, normal, when really what she means is just the opposite. Because this new Doctor, this new man standing before her, he is everything she's not used to and he is the wrong kind of normal for Amy.

"And normal is bad?"

"No, it's not _bad, _it's just… It's different. For you. It's not what I'm used to. Where's the bowtie?" she asks again, somewhat desperate now.

He looks at her with something akin to sympathy. "Doesn't suit, anymore."

"But… but you think bowties are cool."

"I have terrible taste every couple of regenerations. Once it was celery sticks, a rainbow atrocity… the last one had bowties and fezzes." He looks almost disgusted with himself.

Amy is alarmed to find that she might cry.

"Right," she says, blinking rapidly. "Well, um, you look good. Yeah, very… very twenty-first century London. It suits this new you."

He's peering at her now, eyebrows furrowed together. "Amelia…" he starts to say, but she doesn't want to hear it right now.

"I've got some stuff I have to do, in my room. I'll just go do that and, uh, I'll see in a bit, yeah?"

She takes off before he can respond, dashing down the hall to her bedroom and praying that he doesn't follow her. Because she knows it's still _him, _somewhere in there, but she can't see it anymore. And she doesn't want to hear a deep baritone right now, she wants a soft voice and a little kiss on the forehead and for old, familiar hands to straighten a bowtie around a different neck, but she's never going to get that again, and the realisation kills her.

She's being selfish, she knows, and absurdly stupid, but she can't stop herself from being so upset.

She gets out her art kit and sketches the Doctor that's still so prominent in her mind. She draws a close up of his face, a full body shot, a sketch of the two of them lounging poolside in the library; him in his raggedy clothes standing over her seven year old self, him in his stupid tweed and un-cool bowtie, holding hands with her twenty-one year old self. She admires her work before putting them under her pillow, promising herself that she's not going to forget, ever.

./././

The Doctor's always been smarter than everyone else in the room. Amy knows this, but he's never been quite so _obvious _about it before.

He revels in reeling off strings of facts, rubbing it in the others' faces that he's cleverer than them and is always three steps ahead. This Doctor isn't fond of bumbling about and falling down the rabbit hole into whatever adventure they've landed in – he studies everything with a meticulous gaze, looking for clues and appraising every situation with such extensive knowledge that hardly anything is a surprise anymore.

And while he's never really had social skills, her Doctor was awkward in a way that was endearing. This Doctor is just outright _rude, _and the fact that he doesn't seem to realise he's being callous just makes it worse.

He says something insulting to the king of a county on an ice planet, who retaliates by setting the entire palace guard after them, and all he has to say is, "Well it's not my fault the man decided to take on a mistress or a six."

Amy can't believe her ears, and if they weren't busy running for their lives she'd probably slap him square in the face. "You didn't have to _say _it!" she snaps.

He looks about to reply when a laser goes whizzing between their heads and halts all conversation until they're safe inside the TARDIS, and by then Amy's not in the mood for excuses.

"Where do you want to go?" he asks, draping his scarf over the side railing and flicking a switch without any of his old flair.

She folds her arms over her chest and glares at him. "I'd like to go somewhere where you're not going to be an arse to the locals."

He's taken aback by her words. "I was merely being honest."

"Sometimes you need to keep your honesty to yourself."

He opens his mouth, closes it. Thinks, opens it again, turns back to the console. "Alright."

"Alright?"

"Alright. I'll be less abrasive from now on."

It's what she wanted to hear, but instead of relief all she can feel is guilt. "Good," she snaps, and then she tosses her hair over her shoulder and flounces off down the hall, because if she looks into those blue eyes she's going to lose her resolve and end up apologising to him, and that's not what she wants to do.

Because really it's not _that _different from her old Doctor, he'd say stupid things that would land them in trouble all the time.

But it _is _different, because he's _not _her old Doctor, and she's so mad at him for that.

She thinks she hears him call out to her as she goes, but when she turns around he has his back to her.

./././

He changes the desktop, without asking her, and she's so taken aback by it that when she sees the console room for the first time she can't even speak.

"I felt like a change," he explains to her.

He's sitting on the steps, hands steepled beneath his chin, bathed in the eery blue glow of the new lights.

"Yeah," she breathes, "I can see that."

Gone is the glass floor. Gone is the beautiful blown glass central column through which they used to play cat and mouse. Gone is the bright orange lighting, the jump seat they broke once when she bounced into his lap, the wide open space where she first stepped into the TARDIS and realised that her whole world was about to change. It's all gone.

"Well," he prompts when she says no more, "Do you like it?"

"It's a bit… dark," she says, cautiously descending the closest set of stairs.

Above her head Gallifreyan writing is twirling in circular motions around the central console, symbols that the TARDIS won't translate for her no matter how hard she begs it to.

His eyes follow her across the floor. "You don't like it."

"It's different, that's all. It'll take a bit of getting used to."

"Like me."

She stops. Takes a deep breath, counts to five, makes sure she heard him right. Turns to look at him and is stunned by the hurt in his eyes.

"I know you're not adjusting to the change very well, Amelia," he continues, "But I promise you, I'm still me. I'm still the Doctor."

"I know that," she says, all bravado and bluff.

He sees right through her. "I know you miss him."

Her bottom lip quivers, but she will not cry. "Of course I miss him. He was my best friend."

For a second his face contorts into something twisted and painful, a grimace so intensely felt it's like she's physically stabbed him in the heart. But before she can properly register the expression it's gone, replaced by an impassive mask perfect by centuries of self-preservation.

"I'm sorry," she says quickly, but it's too late.

He smiles at her, just a small smile, and for a moment she can see her raggedy man inside there still. "You're still my best friend," he says plainly.

And then his long legs are stretching and he's on his feet, brushing past her and walking around to the other side of the console, disappearing to a lower level she hadn't noticed.

She lets him go, because she doesn't know what to say to that.

./././

He begins to soften a bit, and she wonders how much of it is for her benefit. He takes her to random points in space, throws open the doors and asks her to pick a star, any star she can see, and he'll take her there.

She mentions one day that it'd be her mum's birthday, if they were still running by an Earth calendar, and when she comes back from her shower they're parked in the backyard of her childhood home in Leadworth. This new him hates family gatherings, she knows it, but they manage to get through an entire lunch with him only insulting Rory twice, and all in all she calls the day a success.

When they're running from an erupting volcano on the surface of one of Jupiter's moons, or from a gang of angry street urchins in 1830s London, he takes her hand and pulls her along after him, never letting go until they're far from danger. He's always clever and he's always right, in the end, but she's noticed that he's getting a lot better at letting her figure things out for herself before he gets all uppity and jumps in with the answers.

He's not the same, but he's still the Doctor. With time, Amy will probably get used to him.

And, she has to admit: as much as she misses the bowtie, the scarf does look pretty good with those cheekbones.


End file.
